Opium for the Masses

The King David Hotel in Jerusalem has witnessed many historical scenes, some violent, others diplomatic. One of the more curious incidents took place in April 1974, when a security guard accompanying U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on an official visit to Israel happened to look out a window of the hotel; a former customs officer, he was surprised to see familiar, exotic blooms down in the garden below. On closer inspection he confirmed that the flowers were opium poppies, whose cultivation in Israel was and is strictly forbidden. Although the poppies posed no threat to his distinguished charge, the security guard alerted local authorities, who discovered that hotel gardeners were cultivating poppies and selling opium on the side—confident that no one could possibly imagine the gardens of the illustrious King David Hotel as an opium field.

The laws prohibiting the cultivation of opium poppies in many countries mainly concern the drugs refined from the crude latex. There are normally, for example, no legal restrictions on the culinary use of the seeds of the opium poppy, or the oil pressed from them, neither of which has significant narcotic properties—though, of course, the seeds cannot be obtained without growing the plant first! Indeed, the opium poppy is grown legally under tightly controlled conditions in several countries to serve the legitimate market not only for the seed, used to flavor bread and pastries and to produce oil, but for morphine and heroin, still among the most effective pain-killers known to medical science.

Opium also has deep roots in the ancient world; it may even have penetrated, of all places, into the Bible. The drug comes from the plant Papaver somniferum, or sleep-inducing poppy; thus it was immortalized by the Roman poet Virgil, who sang of “poppies steeped in Lethaean slumber” (The Georgics, 1.78). The ancient Greek word for the psychoactive sap produced by the poppy plant was opion, from opos, their word for juice—hence our “opium.” The Greeks called the poppy plant itself mekon, a word that has cognates in other Indo-European languages and thus appears to derive from the original Indo-European root—which suggests that the opium poppy has been known and named far back in time.

The opium poppy belongs to the botanical family Papaveraceae, a class of annual or perennial herbs, often with milky or colored juice. The genus Papaver, from which our word “poppy” derives, contains around 100 species, only two of which, Papaver somniferum and Papaver setigerum, contain the alkaloid morphine, the principal narcotic element in the plant’s latex.

Once the petals of the bloom have fallen off, the seed head continues to grow at the top of the stem, forming a bulbous, ribbed capsule. Crowning the capsule is a round, serrated disk, called the stigma; below the capsule, on the upper stem, are circular ribs, called the thalamus. The opium juice—a viscous white liquid that darkens as it coagulates on exposure to air—is found in the outer layer of the capsule; it can only be extracted while the seed capsule is still green and therefore unripe. Once the capsule dies and dries out, it turns brown and brittle, the sap evaporates and the seeds remain loose inside. Opium poppies grow prolifically throughout the world, both in the wild and under strictly controlled cultivation. The plant is not subject to any known diseases; it is ineradicable.

In antiquity, the latex was harvested in two ways: by maceration, cutting up the unripe capsules and steeping them in water, wine, honey or any other suitable solvent; or by incision, slicing the capsule’s surface with a sharp instrument so that the sap would seep out, and then scraping it up with a scoop. The latex was drunk in a honey or wine solution, or, once solidified, it was eaten or burnt and inhaled. In these forms, it has a mildly psychoactive effect, though it is still addictive. Until recently, in the absence of sophisticated designer drugs like Viagra, pethidine and Valium, the opium latex was taken for the most basic human needs—sexual arousal, pain relief and sleep. How the drug produced results that might otherwise be thought to cancel one another out says much about the human capacity for suggestion. The closest modern—and licit—agent for creating such a range of sensations is alcohol, which has also from time to time been excoriated and outlawed for the same reasons as opium.

How, when and where opium entered the human “food” chain cannot yet be established from available historical evidence. The earliest botanical remains of Papaver somniferum have been found in third-millennium B.C. sites in west-central Europe, especially Switzerland.¹ The archaeological evidence strongly suggests that the opium poppy did not reach the Near East—or at least did not become part of the Levantine way of life—before the 16th century B.C. The ways and means of this transmission cannot be documented with certainty; but the absence of incontrovertible proof from western Asia that the opium poppy was known before the second millennium B.C. and the fact that the further one moves east the later the poppy emerges in history suggest that the opium poppy was introduced from central Europe or the western Mediterranean.

Possibly the earliest representation of the poppy capsule in the Aegean world is a small limestone half-capital, about 5 inches high, from the Palace of Knossos in Crete. It was found by Arthur Evans in the outer part of the Central Court, near the Stepped Porch, and has been dated to Late Minoan I (1600–1450 B.C.).² This capital resembles a dried-out poppy capsule: It has a flat-topped cap, representing the stigma, and a bulbous ribbed body with circular ribs below, representing the capsule and thalamus. The capital was obviously intended to be placed on top of a pilaster, thus reproducing the arrangement in nature of the poppy capsule attached to its stem.

Another extraordinary find was made in 1936 just a few miles west of Knossos, at the site of Gazi. In an underground room that served as the site’s sanctuary, Greek archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos found a 28-inch-tall terracotta statue, currently on display in the Archaeological Museum in Herakleion.³ Dated to Late Minoan III (1450–1100 B.C.), the statue consists of a hollow cylindrical pedestal surmounted by the bust of a female figure, who holds her arms up at her sides with her palms facing forward. The figure wears a thin band around her head, just above the ears; projecting upwards from her headband are three opium poppy capsules on short stems. Deeply colored slits in the capsules were apparently intended to give the impression of dried latex seeping to the surface after an incision.

This figurine may represent a goddess, or perhaps a priestess hallucinating for the purpose of uttering prophecies. Her upraised hands and glazed-over eyes suggest that she is experiencing an opium-induced trance. Marinatos also found a tubular vase associated with the terracotta statue; this vase, resembling the stand on which the female figure rests, may have been used to burn opium and induce the figure’s ecstasy.

In the same underground deposit, Marinatos discovered four other, similar terracotta statues. These figurines are slightly smaller than our hallucinating idol with the poppy-capsule headband, and they have different objects projecting from their circlets—for example, birds and horns.⁴ But all of the terracotta statues make the same gesture: Their hands are uplifted with their palms facing forward. Thus it is possible that in ancient Crete this gesture suggested a standard act of reverence, rather than a trance-like pose, though of course it could have been both.

The underground chamber that housed these figurines, in any event, was clearly used for cultic purposes, with opium playing an important role in the ceremonies.

Other evidence comes from 12th-century B.C. Kition, in Cyprus, where archaeologist Vassos Karageorghis recovered a cylindrical vase similar to the one from Gazi. Probably used for burning opium, the vase was found in the courtyard of a temple. In the holy-of-holies (or innermost chamber) of an adjacent temple, Karageorghis found an intricately carved ivory pipe, very similar to modern opium pipes; dark stains around the pipe’s vertical opening suggest that it was indeed used for smoking opium.⁵

By this time, Cyprus already had a longstanding familiarity with the drug. The island may even have served as a center for the production of opium latex and its distribution throughout the Near East.

At the beginning of the Late Bronze Age (c. 1650 B.C.), a new, distinctive kind of pottery emerged on the island. This pottery is called Base-ring Ware, because of the annular (ringlike) foot added to keep the containers upright. One of the most common varieties of Base-ring Ware is the juglet, which consists of a swollen, piriform (pear-shaped) body with a ring at the base; a tall, narrow, tapering neck with a bell-shaped rim; and a strap handle running from the upper neck to the shoulder. The juglets range from about 4 to 6 inches in height. Earlier specimens were decorated with strips of clay on the vessel’s body and around the upper neck, where it joined with the handle; sometimes these strips were replaced by incised lines. Later the juglets were painted with white rectilinear patterns on the body and upper neck.

Although certain features of this Base-ring Ware—such as its kind of finish and ornamental techniques—occur in earlier Cypriot pottery, its form is a newcomer to the island’s ceramic repertory. Why did Base-ring Ware emerge at this time, toward the beginning of the Late Bronze Age? It now seems likely that the Base-ring juglets were created in connection with a new kind of commerce: opium production.

Cyprus’s Bronze Age potters had a long tradition of mimicking natural or man-made objects in the shapes of their vases. During the transition from the Early to Middle Bronze Age (20th and 19th centuries B.C.), for example, Cypriot ceramicists modeled their flasks and juglets on hollowed-out gourds. We might, therefore, look for a prototype to explain the new and unusual Base-ring juglet. As it happens, the juglet, once flipped over, is an almost exact replica of the opium poppy capsule: Its annular foot represents the poppy capsule’s stigma, its pear-shaped body represents the capsule, and the two relief ridges around the neck at the junction of the handle represent the thalamus. Even the juglet’s small size seems to suggest the poppy head. Another similarity: the later variety of the Base-ring juglet is often painted with bands of broad white lines, often in multiples of four; this decoration strongly resembles welts of thickened sap congealing on the poppy capsule’s surface after incision.⁶

These vases, with their long slender necks, must have held a liquid. In the southern Levant, Base-ring juglets have been called “bilbils,” for bl bl, the sound they make as liquid flows from the vessels.^a Their small size also suggests that their contents must have been valuable—it is highly unlikely that they would have held commodities like vegetable oil, wine or grain. The obvious candidate is the opium latex dissolved in honey or wine.

These Cypriot Base-ring juglets were exported all over the eastern Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age. Although the vessel is rare in Greece, possibly because opium was already being produced there, and in Anatolia, with which Cyprus had little trade at this time, the poppy-capsule-shaped juglet is well attested in the archaeological record of Syria, Palestine and Egypt. There is no evidence of opium production in any of these regions during the second half of the second millennium B.C.—so Cyprus may have been the principal distribution center. (It is likely, however, that Papaver somniferum was growing wild in the Nile Valley; a poppy capsule was discovered in a tomb from the reign of Pharaoh Thutmose III [1479–1425 B.C.], at the site of Deir el-Medina.⁷)

Scientific tests performed in the 1980s on the contents of Cypriot Base-ring juglets found in Palestine and Egypt have now conclusively shown that these vases once held opium. In two 15th-century B.C. juglets, one from Tell el-Ajjul near Gaza and the other from (probably) somewhere in Palestine, traces of the drug were found along with an oil that was undoubtedly the solvent.⁸ More recently, tests on residues in a Base-ring juglet probably from Egypt and dating to the 16th or 15th century B.C. have demonstrated that the vessel was once filled with a liquid containing crude opium.⁹ It is possible, of course, that these juglets originally contained something else—a valuable oil, for instance—and were only later filled with opium. But it is much more likely that these Cypriot Base-ring juglets were produced to contain and transport opium. Certainly the ancient Cypriots could have devised no more effective means of advertising than to model vessels used to contain opium on the poppy capsule itself.

Many of these Cypriot juglets have been found in Late Bronze Age tombs in the Levant. This suggests that the vessel, shaped like a poppy capsule, was believed to be magically invested with the same therapeutic properties as its contents; the juglet itself may have symbolized the eternal sleep of the dead. Surprisingly, the vast majority of tombs containing the juglets belonged to middle class and less affluent people—which suggests that opium was affordable and available, even if imported from Cyprus. But perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised: Life for the common folk in the eastern Mediterranean must have been nasty, brutish and short in the Late Bronze Age. Sipping or smoking opium would have provided the ideal panacea for their ills, especially pain.¹⁰

On the Greek mainland, evidence of the opium poppy in the Mycenaean period (c. 1550–1100 B.C.) is largely confined to representations of the seed capsule—though iconographers at times have trouble distinguishing depictions of poppy capsules from depictions of pomegranates, which also have piriform bodies and serrated crowns. Two examples from the Peleponnesus, however, both dating to the transition from Late Helladic I to Late Helladic II (c. 1500 B.C.),¹¹ can indeed be identified as representations of poppy capsules: a brooch-pin with a silver stem and gold head, from Vapheio; and a gold pendant, from Mycenae. Both objects have a ribbed body with a serrated stigma; they closely resemble two gold pins in the Norbert Schimmel collection believed to have come from the Anatolian Hittite Empire (c. 1400–1200 B.C.).¹²

Not only do the pins from the Norbert Schimmel collection have all the distinguishing marks of the opium poppy capsule, but they possess another feature making their depiction even more authentic. Inside each pinhead is a loose object that rattles when the object is shaken. This was clearly done to mimic the seeds in dried-out poppy capsules. The model for these pieces of jewelry was not the unripe, juice-laden bulb, but rather the desiccated capsule, which is often included in modern dried-flower arrangements.

For the classical Greeks, the opium poppy played multiple roles—in both the mundane and the spiritual life. Opium was widely prepared for many medicinal and therapeutic purposes, much as we use aspirin. It was taken as a soporific and analgesic, and it was also used to alleviate bronchial, bowel, skin and other disorders. If consumed to excess, the drug was known to be poisonous.¹³

The ancient Greeks also linked the poppy capsule, opium juice and poppy seeds with certain gods: Hypnos, the god of sleep; his son Morpheus, the god of dreams; Nyx, the goddess of night; and Thanatos, the god of death. To these attributes of the opium poppy, the Greeks added others, associating the drug with pleasure and fertility. Not only does opium remove inhibitions and induce a languorous state of mind—making it an aphrodisiac, though not an effective one—but the desiccated capsule contains a multitude of seeds, a sure sign of plenty. For these reasons, the ancient Greeks connected the poppy with the goddesses Aphrodite and Demeter.

Demeter (Roman Ceres, giving us our word “cereal”) was the deity of agriculture, rural life and fecundity. She was the Greek mother goddess who presided over the natural cycle of birth, reproduction and death. Demeter protected and promoted the cultivation of food staples like grain and corn, giving her a prominent place in the life of ordinary citizens. Numerous festivals were held in her honor throughout the growing and harvesting seasons; she was often depicted with barley, wheat and opium poppy capsules in her hands or tucked into her headdress.

Aphrodite, of course, was the goddess of love and fertility. Given the folklore associated with the poppy, it is not surprising that Aphrodite was often associated with Papaver somniferum. At the appropriately named town of Mekone (the ancient Greek word for the opium poppy, as we have seen, was mekon), modern Sikyon, near Corinth, the second-century A.D. Greek geographer Pausanias records having seen a chryselephantine statue (a statue made with gold and ivory) of Aphrodite holding an apple in one hand and a poppy capsule in the other.

Perhaps the most poignant of all the representations of the poppy capsule are finials at either end of a gold diadem worn by a Gallic “princess,” buried around 500 B.C. in a tumulus grave at Vix, about 125 miles southeast of Paris.¹⁴ This superb object was found placed on the skull. The headband would have rested on the top of the wearer’s hair, with the bulbous extremities hanging down in front of the ears. Both finials are piriform, with a stepped and chased body, representing the globular capsule, and a slightly raised, flattened, circular disk, representing the stigma. The piece was made so that the poppy capsules hang at either side of the head; this must have had a symbolic significance appropriate to the deceased in both life and death. It’s earthly significance may have involved the wisdom that comes from opium-induced visions; its otherworldly significance may have involved peaceful, eternal sleep. The diadem’s design strongly suggests Greek workmanship. But most of the other Greek representations of the poppy capsule in the round—in pins, pendants or votive offerings—are smaller and more crudely worked in bronze, stone, clay or bone.¹⁵ There is nothing comparable to this depiction of the poppy capsule from the Greek world of the first millennium B.C.¹⁶

If the ancient Greeks associated opium with life-sustaining fertility, we moderns have loaded the term “opiate” with largely pejorative connotations—as referring to anything that artificially numbs the senses or, more perniciously, gives pleasure. Opium is regarded in the Judeo-Christian ethic as immoral, whereas other religions and cultures are less hide-bound.

Thus it is not surprising that references to the drug in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are, for the most part, uncomplimentary. The Bible mentions the poisonous effects of a substance called, in Hebrew, rosh. Though conventionally translated in English as “gall”—a bitter-tasting substance known to English clergymen of the 17th century A.D.—its biblical contexts link it with a plant that has the properties of Papaver somniferum: a tall flowering plant with a seed head that grows in fields and produces a poisonous, bitter-tasting substance.¹⁷ The poppy capsule is also well attested on Jewish coinage of the second and first centuries B.C., where it is associated with the cornucopia, the symbol of plenty,¹⁸ and with a cult dedicated to the worship of Demeter and Persephone at Samaria-Sebaste.¹⁹

Opium may also play a role in one of the most moving passages in the New Testament, having to do with the death of Jesus. According to Matthew, after Pilate orders that Jesus be crucified, the Roman soldiers mock Jesus by dressing him up in a scarlet robe, putting a crown of thorns on his head and hailing him as “King of the Jews.” They then lead Jesus off to be crucified. When the procession arrives at Golgotha, the soldiers “offered [Jesus] wine to drink, mixed with gall; but when he tasted it, he would not drink it” (Matthew 27:34). The ancient Greek word translated as “gall” has been equated with the Hebrew word rosh, which, as we have seen, almost certainly refers to opium. The bitter-tasting “gall” mixed with wine and offered to Jesus, therefore, could easily have been opium, which is indeed bitter to the taste and dissolves in wine. Moreover, as a highly effective pain-killer and soporific, an opium potion may well have been given to someone about to endure the agony of crucifixion—perhaps out of the soldiers’ latent sense of compassion. Jesus may have refused the drink because of its bitter taste or because he did not want to lose consciousness. John records in his Gospel that just before Jesus expired, he asked for something to slake his thirst and was given a sponge soaked in sour wine without any admixture (John 19:29–30), from which Jesus did drink.

Our story about Papaver somniferum, perhaps the most enchanting form of vegetation in the entire archaeological record, begins and ends in the Holy Land. Once a drug as useful and potent as opium becomes part of the common life, it is as hard to eradicate as the poppy plant itself. A Newsweek article of May 25, 1998 reports that thanks to the market for drugs in Egypt and Israel, the poppy is now flourishing in the Sinai. Some 20 years ago a photograph of Henry Kissinger with a Cypriot Base-ring juglet looming in the background was reproduced in the media and widely distributed. I wonder if he realized its significance.

I am indebted to Mr. John Evans and Dr. John Nunn for their expert advice.

The King David Hotel in Jerusalem has witnessed many historical scenes, some violent, others diplomatic. One of the more curious incidents took place in April 1974, when a security guard accompanying U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on an official visit to Israel happened to look out a window of the hotel; a former customs officer, he was surprised to see familiar, exotic blooms down in the garden below. On closer inspection he confirmed that the flowers were opium poppies, whose cultivation in Israel was and is strictly forbidden. Although the poppies posed no threat to his distinguished charge, the […]